Jurassic Park IV - Spielberg wouldn't lie, would he?

Twenty years after his Velociraptors and Tyrannosaurus Rex ruled Jurassic Park, director Steven Spielberg says the man-eaters are returning to a movie theatre near you - teeth sharpened, and not for the popcorn.

Spielberg told audiences at the giant Comic-Con International convention in San Diego that he was at work on a new Jurassic Park movie, delighting a packed house at the pop culture showcase.

"We have a story. We have a writer working on the script, and I think we will see a Jurassic 4 in our foreseeable future, probably in the next two or three years."

Jurassic Park thrilled audiences in 1993 with its modern-day dinosaurs developed from DNA in fossils that wreaked havoc upon a theme park where, instead of enjoying the wonders of science, the guests got eaten.

The movie took in $915 million worldwide and spawned two sequels.

Spielberg made his first trek to Comic-Con this year to show audiences clips from his upcoming film, The Adventures of Tintin, which was directed by the Oscar winner and produced by Lord of the Rings filmmaker Peter Jackson.

It is scheduled for release in December of this year.

The movie is based on the comic books by Belgian artist Georges Remi, whose pseudonym was Herge, and they tell of a young journalist and his faithful dog who find themselves on numerous adventures, solving mysteries.

Spielberg said he and Jackson, a pair of filmmakers he characterised as "just two huge Tintin fanboys," began conceptualising the movie as many as six years ago.

He said they used state-of-the-art digital camera technology and capitalised on innovations developed by director James Cameron on his smash hit movie, Avatar.

"We wanted to use animation to get as close to the characters that [Herge] invented and not characters that we would then reinvent based on big names, big movie stars," Spielberg said.

The director, a sci-fi film fan since childhood who made the genre movies E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, was at Comic-Con to receive an Inkpot Award for achievement in science-fiction movies.

He received a standing ovation from the crowd and told them: "We all love the same source material that has brought all of us here and the source material has always been the collective imaginations of so many brilliant artists and storytellers."

I remember when we were on our honeymoon 16 years ago at Universal, we drove past an Indy backdrop (it was like a behind the scenes tour) the tour guide said she could proudly announce that a new Indy 4 movie had just been signed, they had a script, etc., and that it should come out in the next two years. Meanwhile, THIRTEEN years later, we finally get the new Indy movie (which IMO was the worst one of them all). I never trust what they say anymore! LOL

They've all gotten progressively worse after the first one. Love love love the first one--even had a JP lunch box in first grade that the girls would make fun of me for--the second one was OK (if only for Jeff Goldblum) but the third one just sucked... terribly. Speaking of Indy, watching it on USA right now... they really shouldn't keep milking movie franchises like these decades after the fact.

It's a lie. It's always a lie. They've been saying it for years. The first one was great. I wasn't crazy about the second one at all, but the third one was tolerable IMO. And I REALLY wish there hadn't been a 4th Indy movie and I and REALLY dreading the upcoming MIB and ID4 sequels. Seriously Hollywood. STOP. IT.